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Founder CEO Coaching

I was a CEO for 25 years. I’m going to make you more successful.

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Coaching Services for Founder CEOs

The CEO role is a lonely one. When you’re a founder CEO, it’s even lonelier. Your team is small. The number of advisors you can turn to is small. The challenges you face are huge.

All great athletes have coaches. All great CEOs have coaches. All founder CEOs should have coaches. I was a founder and CEO, and I had a coach for 17 years. You may not need one for as long as I did, but having a CEO coach changed my life. I would not have gotten to where I am today without the coaching and leadership development I received.

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TESTIMONIALS

Take Their Word For It

Rick Jones

Glenn’s coaching has made a huge difference in how quickly and confidently we’ve been able to grow.

Rick Jones

CEO, Workreels

Simon Law

Glenn provided me with new insights that have helped me and the company tremendously.

Simon Law

CEO, LoginID

Darren Marble

His advice helped me raise $3 million.

Darren Marble

Co-CEO Crush Capital

I’ve been working with Glenn Gow for about two years now, and I can say without a doubt that Glenn has made a massive impact to who I am today as a CEO. Everything that a CEO could possibly want comes from Glenn.

AJ BRUNO

CEO of QuotaPath

Sameer Ahuja

The value per minute you provide is astronomical.

Sameer Ahuja

President GameChanger

Richard Lebovitz

Under Glenn’s guidance, LeanDNA achieved exceptional business outcomes, including being named one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing private companies three years in a row.

Richard Lebovitz

Founder and CEO, LeanDNA

Ziv Binyamini

It’s simple: our sessions get results.

Ziv Binyamini

CEO, Fortellix

I’m learning a lot from Glenn. He’s helped me determine what’s really important so I can make better, more timely decisions to steer my company to where I want it to go.

ROB LEWIS

CEO of Radical Imaging LLC

Olin Hyde

Glenn proved his value in every coaching session.

Olin Hyde

former CEO LeadCrunch

Jeff Strnad

Every coaching session we had with Glenn was extremely valuable.

Jeff Strnad

CEO Door USA

Andrew Luan

Glenn helped me get to a place where I am no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the company.

Andrew Luan

CEO Experience First

Strategically, you help me see things that I may miss or am not thinking about.

You keep me honest, and you help me continually think, why not? Let’s go do this. How do we solve this problem?

ERIC MEIER

CEO of OwlHealth

Michael Kadisha

I feel I have superpower eyesight with you in my corner.

Michael Kashida

CEO Treedom

Eric Meier

You help me be a better businessman, a better leader and a better person.

Eric Meier

CEO, Owl Health

Srinivas Akella

Glenn deeply cares about our success.

Srinivas Akella

CEO, Wootcloud

I’ve been working with Glenn Gow for about two years now, and I can say without a doubt that Glenn has made a massive impact to who I am today as a CEO. Everything that a CEO could possibly want comes from Glenn.

AJ BRUNO

CEO of QuotaPath

Devang Patel

Glenn’s approach is always honest yet deeply encouraging, and his strategies have truly strengthened me in all facets of my life.

Devang Patel

CEO Funding Door

Max Serebryakov

You’ve not only helped me grow as a leader at Sanas, but you’ve consequently elevated our entire organization.

Max Serebryakov

CEO Sanas

vikram Ashok

Glenn has a rare ability to challenge and support at the same time. His perspective on leadership helped me grow faster and with more purpose. I lead differently now – more intentionally and more effectively.

Vikram Ashok

CEO, Graphite

I’m learning a lot from Glenn. He’s helped me determine what’s really important so I can make better, more timely decisions to steer my company to where I want it to go.

ROB LEWIS

CEO of Radical Imaging LLC

michel

Glenn didn’t just coach me; he transformed my approach to leadership.

Michelle Mullaney

CEO, Prosperity

AJ Bruno

Glenn is an exceptional executive coach. His impact on my professional development has been nothing short of transformative.

AJ Bruno

CEO, QuotaPath

Jeffrey Kayzerman

Glenn can help anyone become a better CEO.

Jeffrey Kayzerman

CEO, xOverTime

Strategically, you help me see things that I may miss or am not thinking about.

You keep me honest, and you help me continually think, why not? Let’s go do this. How do we solve this problem?

ERIC MEIER

CEO of OwlHealth

Allan Njoroge

I credit a lot of my success in navigating challenging times to Glenn.

Allan Njoroge

CEO Actriv Healthcare

Rob Lewis

Coaching with Glenn is the best place I can put my money.

Rob Lewis

CEO, Radical Imaging LLC

Liam Nguyen

I have become a better CEO through Glenn’s guidance and counsel.

Liam Nguyen

CEO Pixel Canvas

I’ve been working with Glenn Gow for about two years now, and I can say without a doubt that Glenn has made a massive impact to who I am today as a CEO. Everything that a CEO could possibly want comes from Glenn.

AJ BRUNO

CEO of QuotaPath

Albert Navarro

Glenn is definitely world-class.

Albert Navarro

CEO MetricLock

I’m learning a lot from Glenn. He’s helped me determine what’s really important so I can make better, more timely decisions to steer my company to where I want it to go.

ROB LEWIS

CEO of Radical Imaging LLC

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Founder Coach Glenn Gow Giving Speech with Hex Background about Leadership Development and Growth

When a Founder CEO Should Hire a Founder CEO Coach

The founder CEO faces unique challenges. They often spend a huge amount of time fundraising. They discover that fundraising is more challenging than they realized. Even if they’re successful raising money, they discover that it’s only one step in the fundraising process, a process that will repeat itself many times over.

The founder CEO has tremendous skills one on one or two functional areas. They might be great at engineering or product management, or sales. These skills are critical when getting the company off the ground.

In fact, co-founders are often chosen because they have complementary skills. When starting a company, a small number of people can cover most of the most important functions.

Founder CEOs Must Scale Themselves to Scale their Company

Very quickly, though, the skills of the founding team and especially the skills of the founder CEO are no longer sufficient. The minute a company starts to scale, those original skill areas of the CEO become less important than they were.

Why? Because a founder CEO needs a new set of skills to help them scale. Let’s say you are a founder CEO, and you have great engineering skills. The minute you start scaling, those engineering skills need to be augmented with other skills like management, fundraising, leadership, recruiting, and much more.

The number one reason founder CEOs get fired is they can’t scale the company. The reason they can’t scale the company is that they can’t scale THEMSELVES. For a CEO to scale themselves, they must acquire many new skills.

My job is to help founding CEOs identify the new skills they need and teach them those skills.

Determine if Glenn IS Right for You

Glenn’s Qualifications as a Founder CEO

I was a founder CEO myself.
I had a coach teach me the skills I needed to scale.
I coached founder CEOs when I was in venture capital. I helped them scale their businesses, and I helped them scale themselves.
I continue to coach founder CEOs today.

Navigating the Unique Business Challenges of Being a Founder CEO

I understand the unique challenges founder CEOs face and help them identify and successfully improve their skills to deal with those unique challenges.

Every founder CEO faces similar challenges. That helps me quickly identify the obstacles to growth founder CEOs encounter. Even better, I have seen virtually all the issues a founder CEO faces and have helped them successfully navigate themselves to success.

I’ve seen the movie before. Because I’ve seen the movie before, I can predict what is going to happen should they continue down a particular path. I will steer them away from that path.

In addition, I love sharing best practices with my other CEOs. While I never reveal who my clients are, when I see them doing something that really works, I share that best practice with every relevant CEO.

I’ve made most of the mistakes a founder CEO can make.

You want to stand on my shoulders and avoid all my expensive mistakes. I will help you avoid them.

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Executive Coaching Process

When I am coaching a founder CEO, the process is quite simple. We just get on a call and start dealing with the issues that come up.

Very quickly, I will help the CEO determine what is important. Because CEOs have so much on their plate, it’s often difficult to distinguish between what’s most important and what is less important, especially at the moment.

Focused Coaching Sessions Help You Identify Priorities and Make Decisions

At the moment, the issue that has upset or excited the CEO is what they want to discuss the most. My job is to listen and determine whether or not that particular issue is something we should spend time on or not.

Once we get clear on the most important things, we will “go deep” on those issues to deal with them in our working session together.

When we go deep on the most important issues, we make huge progress.

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TESTIMONIALS

Coaching Testimonials

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ALL SUCCESS STORIES

“I consider myself a successful founder CEO, and I never thought I needed an executive coach. I work with Glenn because I’m ambitious and want to get even better. Working with him is like getting compound interest — I get better every time we talk. He helps me improve in a lot of areas. He helped me find balance between my work and home life which helped me find harmony in life. Glenn has helped me become a better leader and I have seen a great improvement in different areas in our organization from revenue to culture. I credit a lot of my success in navigating challenging times in my career to him. The only regret I have is never having found Glenn when I was starting my company.”
– Allan Njoroge, founder, and CEO, Actriv Healthcare

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Benefits of Working with a Founder CEO Coach

If you’re a founder CEO – what’s in it for you to work with a CEO coach?

Your chances of creating a successful company go way up.

You are much more likely to STAY as the CEO as the company grows.

You will grow as a person, enabling you to grow as a CEO.

You will pick up many new skills that will serve you well in this job, future jobs, and overall life.

You will feel less pressure on your journey to success.

You will learn how to create balance. You will learn that a balanced life actually improves your personal performance.

You will enjoy your job a lot more!

Contact Glenn Gow to Get Started Today!

Every founder CEO is unique. Most of the challenges they face are ones I’ve seen before. Together, in one hour, we can make amazing progress.

Let’s talk. Let’s do a working session together so you can get a feel for how this works. Worst case, you’ll get real work done within our hour together. Best case, you’ll want to do this kind of work every week. Schedule a chat with me at calendly.com/glenngow.

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WHY WAIT?

Let’s Start Something

We need to determine if we’re a good fit. If you’d like to explore a coaching relationship, please grab some time on my calendar so we can just get to know each other.

Book an appointment below, or email me at glenn@glenngow.com.

You can also call or text me at 650-793-0128.

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SUCCESS STORIES

Janice Raises Over $100M for Her Company

Janice Raises Over $100M for Her Company

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As one of the founders, Janice had created the perfect solution in an exploding market. As her CEO Coach, we worked very hard to create a scalable business model that significantly accelerated revenue growth. This model included geographic expansion, the addition of new product offerings, and stickiness to create repeat business.

This triple revenue-acceleration model not only worked but it attracted the interest of growth investors.

But a growth model wasn't enough. We needed to help Janice become a better CEO. Specifically, we worked on how to manage her board, so their faith in her as the CEO grew as time went on.

For some CEOs, the board can be intimidating. At first, it was for Janice as well. We worked on how to manage the board and get the most out of the board. Ultimately, we turned the board into a strong set of advisors and advocates for Janice as the CEO.

The support and confidence of the existing board was a critical factor in enabling her to raise well over $100M in the next round, increasing the valuation by more than $600M.

Darren Raises His First $3 Million

Darren Raises His First $3 Million

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My CEO client (Darren) was starting a company in a new category. He was focused on raising capital for his business and wanted help crafting his story. Darren is a brilliant CEO, yet he realized he could produce a better story with help from someone who has created successful fundraising stories many times.

When we started working together, his story was overly complex, difficult for investors to understand, and not as strong as it could have been. Together we built a story about the tremendous value the company was creating. We used historical precedent to bolster the vision and mission. We gave investors confidence in the founders. We proved that the company could scale.

Investors are pattern-matchers. They look for the patterns that tell them this opportunity is like other opportunities they’ve seen, giving them a strong belief in the potential ROI. Together, Darren and I constructed a winning story that helped key investors see the patterns of success.

According to Darren, “Glenn gave me the perspective and confidence I needed to succeed.” Darren raised $3 million for his startup company in his first round. Darren has continued to successfully raise money in later rounds as well.

Meilin Creates A Scaling Organization

Meilin Creates A Scaling Organization

ALL SUCCESS STORIES

Meilin was always asking, "How can I help my company grow faster?" She was successful by most measures but had higher growth ambitions.

As her CEO Coach, I helped focus her efforts and energies on an often-overlooked area for many CEOs. This area enables scaling and enables the CEO to manage their team more effectively -- values.

Most CEOs have corporate values but don't use them as the ultimate way to install a belief system - a way for every employee to focus on the most critical issues for the company.

Meilin and I worked on making the values core to the thinking and speaking of the management team. Once the management team adopted these values and started speaking about them in their regular communications, we knew that we were on our way to ensuring that every employee “lived” the values.

While values are not the only thing a company needs to grow fast, they are critical to its success. Meilin's company is now growing over 100%.

Sean Gets It All Done

Sean Gets It All Done

ALL SUCCESS STORIES

As CEO, Sean had no work-life balance, and he was struggling with the overwhelming responsibilities of being a CEO. One of the biggest challenges of any CEO is to get everything done. The list of critical items seems to grow every day.

As his CEO coach (and as a former CEO), I recognized the stress he was under. That level of stress is no fun. To help Sean become a better CEO, I focused him on delegation, talent development, and balance.

First, we focused on developing Sean's delegation skills. Delegation is the "8th wonder of the world." When you make it work, your workload diminishes, and the company performs at a higher level. As Sean became better at delegating, he also began to see strengths and weaknesses in his leadership team from a different perspective.

The next step was to refresh his leadership team. We created a plan to either develop the ones that could step it up and perform better or find new leadership team members for those that couldn't help the company grow.

Finally, we worked on creating a way of living for Sean that provided him some balance. I tell my CEOs to "put their oxygen mask on first." If a CEO wants to perform at the highest level, they need to take care of themselves first.

Now that Sean has a much better leadership team, he has become a master delegator. By delegating many of the activities he had taken on before, he now has much more time to take care of himself.

Sean's company has now entered a new growth phase. More importantly, he is enjoying his work a lot more and his life a lot more.

Viraj Fires His “Best” Employee

Viraj Fires His “Best” Employee

ALL SUCCESS STORIES

As a CEO, Viraj was focused on employee retention. He recognized the value of keeping high-performing employees and the high cost of turnover.

One of Viraj's direct reports was one of his "best" employees. This person consistently out-performed against their targets. Within their function, they were a rock star.

However, this same person was toxic to the rest of the organization. They constantly argued with others, and they made most others feel bad about themselves. Viraj found he was spending a great deal of time managing around the toxicity created by this employee.

Viraj valued this person's contributions within their function, and he also really hated the idea of employee turnover. As a result, Viraj put up with this person and continued to work around the toxicity issue.

As Viraj's CEO Coach, I helped him understand that team alignment and team cohesion are critical factors to help the company grow. We agreed that preventing employee turnover is a good goal, but not at the expense of creating a well-functioning team.

Viraj wanted to become a better CEO, and he knew what he had to do. While it was difficult, he decided to fire the person he once thought was his "best" employee.

The first thing he heard from the rest of his direct reports was, "What took you so long?"

Olivia Finds Product-Market Fit

Olivia Finds Product-Market Fit

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Olivia, my CEO client, is a product genius. She is highly creative, an excellent problem-solver, and knows how to get products out the door on time.

Olivia raised a great deal of money based on her product ideas and some early successes. The challenge was that her company wasn't growing fast enough. The pressure from the investors was building, and she was worried.

Raising a lot of money early is a blessing and a curse. The curse is that Olivia delivered her product too quickly. She delivered it, making too many assumptions about the market she was serving. When the product was released, it was a good fit but not a great fit.

Olivia was concerned about the time and dollars it would take to conduct research and test product-market fit in multiple market segments. We created a partnering strategy that enabled us to test multiple new market segments in a short time.

Olivia has found multiple market segments that are a fit for the product. Now that she has achieved product-market fit, the strategy is to "go big" on the go-to-market. And her company is taking off.

Wilson Turns the Board Around

Wilson Turns the Board Around

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Wilson was a first-time CEO. The company was doing well, but not quite as well as the board had hoped. Wilson found himself uncomfortable as a minority shareholder working with a board that could fire him if he didn't perform.

Wilson wanted to know how to manage a Board of Directors. The first step was to acknowledge that a board has different measures of success than the CEO. That means there will naturally be tension. The second step was to dig in to deeply understand what the key drivers are for each board member.

Based on this information, Wilson can now address his needs, the company's needs, and the board's needs. That was the first breakthrough.

Once he knew how to address the needs of the board, we turned to address his needs. As Wilson's CEO Coach, I helped him realize that the board is an incredible asset to leverage.

Wilson began to build relationships with the board members individually to understand better how they could be of service to him and the company.

When Wilson works with the board, he is fully aware of their needs and addresses them appropriately. More importantly, he now tells the board what he is doing and relies on their insight and experience for feedback on how to help the company perform at a higher level.

Wilson is no longer concerned about the board and now gets more out of them than ever before.

Darius Solved His Crisis

Darius Solved His Crisis

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I got the call at 10 PM on a Thursday. Darius, a CEO client, reached out to me just as I was about to end the day. "Glenn, my Chief Revenue Officer, just resigned, and I'm not sure what to do."

Darius was running a rapidly-growing business that was highly dependent on a well-run sales organization. He had delegated sales responsibility to his Chief Revenue Officer so Darius could focus on engineering and product.

The good news is that Darius didn't relinquish oversight or reporting of sales, just sales execution. It's also true that Darius wasn't in a panic, and we had worked on a plan for the departure of each of his direct reports.

At the moment, though, Darius and I needed to review that plan to ensure it was our best option. We checked whether or not the interim head of sales could genuinely step into the role. We discussed which accounts Darius should immediately nurture relationships with. We agreed that the recruiter we would need was still the right recruiter.

We quickly put together a communication plan on how to bring this news to the leadership team and the rest of the company. We worked on the exact next steps to interact with the interim head of sales, the director of sales operations, and HR.

Darius felt he didn't know what to do, but in actuality, he did. We had prepared for this, and he just needed to talk it through in the heat of the moment so he could execute against the plan immediately.